Comparison between different MEMS Laterally Vibrating Resonator Technologies for Passive Voltage Amplification in an RF Front-End System

This paper describes the challenges associated with attainingpassive voltage gain by means of piezoelectric MEMS Laterally VibratingResonators (LVRs) in an RF frontend (RFFE) system. LVR technologies based ondifferent piezoelectric films – Aluminum Nitride (AlN), Scandium-dopedAluminum Nitride (Scx Al1–xN), and Y-cut and X-cut Lithium Niobate(LN) – are compared in regards to their impact on the sensitivity of anultra-low power wake-up resonant micromechanical receiver (RMR) [1]. Due tothe outstanding performance in terms of quality factor at resonance $(Q_{s})$ and electromechanical coupling $(k_{t}^{2})$, X-cut LithiumNiobate resonators are identified as the optimal approach for this radioarchitecture. Design, fabrication, and testing of an array of X-cut LNresonators is finally presented to demonstrate the capabilities of thistechnology.